{"id":675495,"date":"2026-05-16T21:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/675495\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T21:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:50:10","slug":"mohamed-salah-arne-slot-liverpool-unrest-continues-as-xabi-alonso-chooses-chelsea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/675495\/","title":{"rendered":"Mohamed Salah & Arne Slot: Liverpool unrest continues as Xabi Alonso chooses Chelsea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mohamed Salah’s latest unprompted public outburst will ratchet up the pressure on struggling Liverpool<\/a> head coach Arne Slot by several notches.<\/p>\n

Salah first laid bare his frustrations with Slot and Liverpool<\/a> after the 3-3 draw at Leeds United<\/a> in December, claiming he had been “thrown under the bus”<\/a> after being dropped following the Premier League champions’ poor start to the season.<\/p>\n

This time Salah, who is scheduled to play his final game for Liverpool<\/a> against Brentford<\/a> at Anfield on the closing weekend of the season, took to social media after Friday’s 4-2 loss at Aston Villa<\/a> to launch a thinly-veiled attack on their style under Slot and the failures this season.<\/p>\n

Slot has been losing credit fast since winning the Premier League in his first season after succeeding Jurgen Klopp.<\/p>\n

And now Salah has called for a return to the kind of football Klopp made his trademark – a “heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear”, to use the Egyptian’s words.<\/p>\n

“The identity that needs to be recovered and kept for good,” he added.<\/p>\n

The contrast was sharp between Unai Emery’s vibrant Aston Villa<\/a> – who confirmed Champions League football next season with victory at Villa Park and who are in the Europa League Final – and porous, weak Liverpool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And then came the latest twist in this troubled, turbulent Liverpool<\/a> season.<\/p>\n

This sort of pronouncement could justifiably be seen as Salah repaying his head coach by throwing Slot under the bus, the breakdown of their relationship providing a fractious backdrop to a season in which Liverpool<\/a>‘s title defence has disintegrated.<\/p>\n

If Salah’s attack clearly does not help Slot, who has lost the faith of many Liverpool<\/a> fans as the Anfield atmosphere becomes increasingly toxic, then his analysis of “us crumbling to yet another defeat this season” hardly reflects well on his own team-mates either.<\/p>\n

The sub-plot to Salah’s post is that a large number of those same Liverpool<\/a> supporters see Xabi Alonso as Slot’s natural successor.<\/p>\n

But the former Real Madrid manager now looks destined for Chelsea<\/a>, who hope to announce the Spaniard as their new permanent head coach in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Alonso has long been touted as a future Liverpool<\/a> manager, having won the Champions League as a player and then impressed hugely during his time as Bayer Leverkusen boss.<\/p>\n

Some hoped he would replace Klopp two years ago, but he instead opted to remain with Leverkusen and Slot came in instead.<\/p>\n

It would seem again the timing just will not quite marry up for those dreaming of a fairytale return to Anfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mohamed Salah’s latest unprompted public outburst will ratchet up the pressure on struggling Liverpool head coach Arne Slot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-675495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}